Chris Wolf's Virtualization Tips and Ramblings

VMware Will be a Public Cloud IaaS Provider

Chris — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:35:15 +0000

Let’s face it. Sometimes being an “enabler,” is admirable. However, if you’ve seen an episode of Intervention lately, being an enabler is not always a good thing. VMware’s IaaS strategy was to enable its partners to offer vCloud services and give it’s customers near unlimited (>9,500 partners) choice of cloud providers. There was a big issue with this strategy – it assumed that VMware’s cloud partners would be A-OK with allowing customers to come and go. At the end of the day, that didn’t meet VMware’s provider partners business model. No one wants to race to the bottom of a (Read more...)

The 90s Called: They Want Their Procurement Team Back

Chris — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 03:06:21 +0000

Today I talked to a client about their private cloud architecture and pending investments. The talk hit on a lot of areas, ranging from software licensing, to vendor support, to orchestration, and finally to standardization. When we got to the topic of standardization and procurement, they couldn’t contain themselves. One member of the organization said:

We can’t even say we’re a Microsoft Exchange shop. As far as procurement is concerned, we can’t even have a standard for email.

If that sounds odd to you, then consider your investments for private cloud. Providers achieve tremendous economies of scale through high degrees (Read more...)

Heterogeneous Virtualization Trends at Gartner Data Center

Chris — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 16:00:15 +0000

Heterogeneous virtualization has been a hot topic among clients and last week at the Gartner Data Center conference in Las Vegas I presented a session on the subject. During the session, I polled the audience on their heterogeneous virtualization plans. Fifty participants responded to each polling question.

The first question I asked was about the current hypervisors that were deployed (note that the values are the number of respondents and not a percentage).

As you can see, most participants used VMware vSphere as expected, and there was a good mix of Hyper-V, XenServer, and some RHEV and Oracle VM.

It’s (Read more...)

Desktop Virtualization Trends at Gartner Data Center

Chris — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 22:13:37 +0000

At the Gartner Data Center conference in Las Vegas last week I asked several polling questions regarding desktop virtualization adoption plans and trends, and thought that they were worth sharing. Note that the poll was taken in my session on “Desktop Virtualization: Tales from the Trenches,” so the audience was already at least considering the technology.

The first question I asked was regarding business drivers.

As you can see above, the majority of respondents wanted to use the technology to reduce TCO, while giving users a “Follow-me desktop” was a close second. We have multiple clients that have been able (Read more...)

Catalyst 2012 and Mobile Futures

Chris — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 21:29:22 +0000

This year at Catalyst we are going out with a bang, with industry heavyweights Brad Anderson (Microsoft) and Simon Crosby (Bromium) offering keen insights into mobility, application, data, and endpoint futures. If that’s not enough, some of my Gartner colleagues (Tom Austin, Larry Cannell, and Ken Agress) will share their knowledge of mobility futures as well. If you’re at Catalyst, be sure to stay through the Thursday morning sessions or you’ll miss out on great perspectives regarding future planning considerations. If you haven’t signed up, it’s not too late! Besides, is there a better place to be in August than (Read more...)

Standardization ADD: We are all Hypocrites

Chris — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 12:50:32 +0000

Standardization Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or (SADD): (n) A condition in which one professes to support standardization, yet can’t help but be distracted by the newest, shiniest object – Opex costs be damned.

I’m a hypocrite. There. I said it. It’s almost therapeutic. Are you one too?

Here’s how I see it. We are all taking part in a great conspiracy. Many of us are both victors and victims in this circular history that we can’t help but repeat. End user organizations are spending way too much on IT services, and we are all at fault. Why? Let’s start with (Read more...)

Hyper-V 3: A Windows Server 2003 Remix?

Chris — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 00:25:03 +0000

Remember the days of Windows NT Server? I was among the many who mocked it as a serious data center server operating system. Then came Windows 2000 Server, and perceptions began to change. With the release of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft turned the tide of server OS dominance in the data center, placing Microsoft on a path to where the majority of servers would run a Windows OS. What initially seemed like a pipe dream became reality, and I was among many who were wrong about Microsoft’s chances as a dominant server OS vendor.

That takes us to last week’s (Read more...)

VMworld 2011: If Amazon is the Benchmark…

Chris — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 18:46:00 +0000

In a recent Gartner field search study, two early internal IaaS cloud adopters noted that if Amazon was the benchmark by which they are measured in terms of cost, then they had to make tough decisions regarding best-of-breed vs. good enough. In particular, the two clients cited whether deploying a third party virtual switch (i.e., Cisco Nexus 1000V) was absolutely necessary, especially if the cost made the internal cloud less competitive with Amazon. These organizations weren’t doing apple-to-oranges comparisons either. They came up with a per-VM cost broken down by both infrastructure and management/operations software. The cost of operational software (Read more...)

VMworld 2011: Dancing on Citrix’s Doorstep?

Chris — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:42:30 +0000

VMware recorded a pretty humorous video that was unveiled at this week’s VMworld North America conference. A few minutes into the music video, VMware folks are literally shown dancing on Citrix’s doorstep (outside the Citrix office in Santa Clara). While this could be taken as a simple competitive prank, multiple conversations I’ve had with VMware’s end user computing team led me to believe that the dance was more of a metaphor for VMware’s confidence in their product portfolio. At the Gartner Catalyst North America 2011 conference, VMware announced that View 5.0’s PCoIP protocol enhancements would reduce bandwidth by up to (Read more...)

VM/Cloud Mobility Town Hall at Catalyst

Chris — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:04:31 +0000

Kyle Hilgendorf and I will be hosting a Twitter Town Hall at next week’s Gartner Catalyst Conference. Attendees at the conference will be able to participate in the open Q&A and white boarding session. In addition, we’re looking for folks to submit questions via Twitter as well. The topic is a good one – we’re talking about VM and cloud mobility. We spent a lot of time this year with early internal/private cloud adopters and learned a lot about problems end user organizations have with mobility. We’ll be sharing those finding not only in our Catalyst sessions, but in (Read more...)